The echoes — and the horns — could be heard all along Hempstead Turnpike: “Nassau needs NUMC.”
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, hundreds of Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC) employees, some of whom had been patients themselves, along with first responders and the community, came out to rally to save NUMC from a state takeover, restore funding, and to keep the current administration in place.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Mayor of Hempstead Waylyn Hobbs, Jr., “that we’ve gone a month without rain. We need to end the drought at NUMC.”
With no state funding, according to Interim CEO Megan Ryan, in 2024 — and none in the pipeline for 2025 — NUMC officials say 3,600 jobs — and thousands of lives — are at risk.
“Nassau [University Medical Center] serves a lot of people with few to no benefits,” said Nico, an NUMC nurse from Levittown.
Nico has a three-month-old baby, a wife, and helps his family in the Philippines. If he were to lose his job due to a state takeover, he said, it would be impossible to survive.
He also spoke of the progress for NUMC under current leadership.
“Under Megan Ryan we have had a lot of progress,” he said. “There have been job openings, transparency.”
Dr. Lennox Bryson, who started at NUMC in 1996 as an intern, and is currently the Director of the Women’s Health Center, echoed the sentiment.
“This hospital belongs to its people. We want no state takeover,” he said. “We ask for no change in leadership.”
Kim Edwards-Johnson is a second-generation employee at NUMC. The Deputy Chief Nursing Officer, who was born at the hospital and whose mom worked there, has been with NUMC for 36 years, and said that up until now, she has never known any leadership.
That is, until the current administration took over.
“Everybody here today puts people over politics,” said Ryan. “That’s how we run our facility. We have shown we are viable, and have shown that over time we need less and less.”
But, she said, “There is a legal and moral obligation to fund us so we have no interruption in services. Nassau needs NUMC. Nassau needs all of you.”
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